“He is fiftysomething, wears jackets by Prada or Tom Ford, looks a little bit like Ron Howard, and is orbited by a constellation of PRs larger even than Lagerfeld’s,” writes Luke Leitch, referring to fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.

If Leitch was hoping to get Parker to acknowledge that the majority of Nike footwear — all of it, as the company likes to say, designed with the athlete in mind — is worn by people who will never venture onto a playing court or field, Parker was having none of it.

Yet while Nike focuses all its research and marketing oomph on serving an elite band of athletes in sports ranging from snowboarding to sprinting, the wider world is littered with hundreds of millions of immobile slobs like me - and now lots of fashionable women, too - who wear Nike simply because the shoes look great and are comfortable. To service us slobs, every week the company releases scores of new designs or colour combinations, and even offers its customers the opportunity to design their own. The fashionability of Nike - equal to its sporting credentials - is what makes it such a success. To admit as much, though, is not the Nike way.

So when I ask about the aesthetics of Nike's shoes, Parker responds by resolutely sticking to sports: "When athletes look at themselves in the mirror and are ready to compete, it is like an actor going out on stage. They want to look and feel like they are ready to do what they do. You want to be fast, you want to be strong, you want to be intimidating - you might want to be a peacock, too. That psychological element is incredibly important. To get into their heads, not only in terms of what they want from performance - fit, traction, cushioning, whatever - but also in terms of what kind of aesthetic they are looking for, is part of the equation.”

Nike Golf: Tom Stites, head of club design at Nike Golf since 2001 who retired last year and now serves as a Nike consultant, talks to The Calgary Herald about what goes into the clubs used by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

Soccer showdown:The Mercury of South Africa takes a look at the competition among brands for dominance in soccer leading up to and following the World Cup in Brazil.

Club management:The Portland Timbers are among six finalists being considered for the best sports team award, to be presented in May by the SportsBusiness Journal. If the Journal is looking for an international entry, perhaps the publication need look no further than A.S. Roma in Italy. The New York Times writes about how the team’s American owners have helped turn around Roma’s fortunes.